The Zapotec language family has a long record of alphabetic texts, dating back to 1565. While Spanish-language texts from the Mexican colonial period are frequently consulted by scholars, the contemporaneous Zapotec-language texts are not, in part because of the challenge of interpreting the Zapotec-language manuscripts. This project elucidates the Zapotec-language materials by creating a collection of transcribed and translated wills, making them publicly available in an online text explorer which allows a non-linear exposition of the texts (http://ticha.haverford.edu). A book, including a sketch grammar of the Colonial Valley Zapotec language, draws from and complements these wills. Without such explication these texts will likely remain unused outside the small group of specialists already using them.